Prologo, 1993

The photographic reproduction of a monumental staircase features a rectangular cut-out at the centre, in the area corresponding to a gilt frame. Peering out from this blind "painting", located in the vanishing point of the perspective, is a white rectangle, of the same size, which is corroborated by the other rectangles applied at random all around the image; increasing in size as they grow towards the foreground, they feature a drawing that hints at further rectangles. A red pencil line prolongs the diagonals of the central painting as far as the edges of the sheet.
The dispersal of the rectangles alludes to the attempt, which is constantly being renewed by the artist, to give the painting a face, or, rather, to question the very possibility of its having one. The prolonging of the diagonals suggests a potentially unlimited number of hypotheses, as the title refers to the moment that precedes the start of the narrative or the performance, in which nothing is definite and everything is still possible.
Broadly speaking, the title designs the condition or rather the dimension that is proper to all of Paolini's works, starting from his first painting, Disegno geometrico (GPO-0001) – evoked here by the red diagonals – that in 1960 was limited to suggesting the geometric squaring of the surface, the preliminary of any image.
The same theme can be found in several variants produced between 1993 and 1994 (cf. among the large-scale works GPO-0910, and among the works on paper GPC-0899, GPC-2339, GPC-0883). The title appears in two works on paper from 2016-17, which are formally different, but conceptually comparable (GPC-1570, GPC-1986).
The original collage on which the print is based is documented in the online Catalogue Raisonné of the works on paper at number GPC-0873.